


yuanfen

by kemonomimi



Series: fate's touch [2]
Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Relationships, Canon Related, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14622099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kemonomimi/pseuds/kemonomimi
Summary: fate continues to be a capricious mistress. sequel to koi no yokan.





	yuanfen

**Author's Note:**

> season four spoilers!
> 
> yuanfen (chinese) - a relationship by fate or destiny.
> 
> sequel to [koi no yokan;](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12774333) pretty hard to understand without. original inspirations for this series are credited in that fic as well, do check them out.

_Of course_ Camus is asleep for this – or fucking feigning sleeping, leaving Ranmaru to deal with Reiji and his nosey questions all on his own. He roped Ai into his schemes too, which only made it worse; it is hard to deny the kid an answer to his honest curiosity, even if it is a result of Reiji’s mischief.

“Come on, Ran-ran! Ai-Ai wants to see!” Reiji looks ridiculous with his lips puckered into a pout and his eyes glittering like that, but Ai nods seriously beside him.

“You’re just being nosy.” Ranmaru narrows his eyes with a huff, but concedes with an annoyed rub of his neck. “You’re sharing too,” he orders Reiji, cutting off any complaints by sliding off the numerous studded leather bracelets he often wore as accessories around his wrists.

The fading, blue, vein-y mark of a soulmate-less existence isn’t nearly as stark as it used to be. 

Reiji’s incessant begging hushes and Ai creeps closer to see, experimentally reaching out to poke with a long, cool finger.

“See? I told you. It’s nothing; I don’t have one.” He swallows, self-conscious of his group-mate’s attention. Even Camus’ breathing on the other side of the room seems quieter. He probably is faking being asleep after all, _asshole._

“Ran-ran… that’s a conditional mark.” How is it for such an idiot Reiji can have such heavy eyes? Sometimes Ranmaru swears they can see right through everyone. “It means trauma or some event cut you off from the potential to have a soulmate.” 

“What the hell..?” Regarding his group-mate with suspicion and disbelief, Ranmaru jerks his arm back against the safety of his own chest.

“I went to a specialist! See, mine is –,“ Reiji rolls up his sleeve to reveal a jagged mark lined in white, not dissimilar to a birthmark in color, “Ah, well it’s kinda obvious what mine is, right? But I hoped it was something else. Sometimes the colors mean something else, right?” Warm, silver-tinted eyes refuse to meet Ranmaru’s, like there is more to be said. “A-Anyway, the specialist showed me all the unique marks and what they mean! I’m almost an expert myself, ya know!”

The mark on Reiji’s wrist is recognizable enough that Ranmaru averts his gaze, too. He had seen a similar one on his mother’s wrist after the death of his father – though hers had been the color of burned flesh, stark and searing. Ranmaru doesn’t call Reiji’s bluff – whatever his mark meant, it probably wasn’t something he should pry into.

Ai watches the exchange with detached bewilderment, absently fiddling with his phone. “Reiji is right, it seems.” He holds up his phone, a picture of a mark similar to Ranmaru’s on the screen.

Reiji snatches the phone and zooms in on the paragraph of text below the picture. “’This is nicknamed _the Late Bloomer_ mark,’ Ran-ran, you’re blooming!”

“Shut up!” At least Ai is able to wrestle back his phone before Ranmaru takes a cuffed swing at Reiji. It misses, of course, but it could have damaged the electronic. Reiji grabs at the arm in question and the two tumble to the floor of the hotel room, nearly taking a lamp down with them.

“…Actually, it looks like you’ve officially blossomed! It’s gone, Ran-ran! Look!” The maraca-shaker’s smile is so sunny it physically hurts Ranmaru to look at it directly.

But sure enough, the mark had completely faded away in the span of a few seconds, as if the realization of its true nature had been the final push Ranmaru needed to release him from his invisible fetters.

Ranmaru tells himself not to think too much about it.

\--

He does anyway.

It’s impossible not to, with Ren and Masato being so… _ugh._

They still bicker like children at times, but it’s almost palpable, the affection; the lingering touches, the gentle regard for one another. They try to be considerate – maybe that’s what makes it worse, that they go out of their way to still be nosy about his activities. 

Their attention flusters him, and that irritates him.

He’s almost glad to receive the orders to move into the apartment with the other members of Quartet Night, or so he tells himself to make the pang of loneliness as he packs up his things a little less dull in his chest.

\--

Ren comes to him first.

They sit on the park bench, their knees touching. Ren is smiling, but the lines around his eyes are taut, cautious.

“I don’t know if he’s coming back,” Ren admits. “I think he is – I want to believe he is. But well.” His smile dips a little. Ranmaru’s expression hasn’t changed since Ren started talking about Masato being called home to face his father, but he wonders if Ren can hear how loud his heart is pounding. He knows the pressures of family obligations all too well. “He’s not answering me.”

He gets the feeling Ren doesn’t actually want his advice, or to hear an echo of the same sentiments Ren is probably telling himself already – it’s a real possibility that Masato may not return. He wants a kindred soul to whom to talk. 

“He has to face it,” Ranmaru answers anyway, though his knee bumps Ren’s. He wonders if the gesture is encouraging, like he means it to be.

The smile on Ren’s lips is wry, like he expected the answer, but he nods. For a moment they sit in heavy, intimate silence. The three of them share a past to which no one else can relate, sure, but for a moment it almost feels deeper.

\--

Masato does come back, of course.

He comes back looking less like Atlas; he chucked the world to the wayside and finally tasted the freedom he sought. It suits him. 

“Kurosaki-senpai.” Masato’s tone is so cautious Ranmaru almost sighs; what has him so spun around and twisted up in his own head that he is almost reluctant to ask? It can only lead to trouble. Masato takes Ranmaru’s silence as permission to continue. “Jinguji said you no longer have… the particular mark barring your connection to a… potential match. Is that true?”

Of all the questions he expected Masato to ask, that one is not on the list. _Why,_ he wants to ask, but he doesn't.

“What about it?” His response isn’t as gruff as he meant it to be, he tells himself, because he was caught off guard. 

“We were just wondering if you attempted contact.” Masato takes a sip from his tea cup so serenely that Ranmaru grumbles, realizing that this conversation, situation is a set-up. If it was Ren seated across from him being nosy, Ranmaru would tell him off and Ren would look at him with those injured puppy eyes for a few hours and Ranmaru would pretend it didn’t bother him and that would be that – but it’s Masato perched with his tea, infallible; Masato with his newfound confidence and self-assuredness, probably with Ren out of sight to inform later. 

He’s doomed. The pair of them as a team are almost worse than Reiji.

“No,” he answers flatly. He can hear the next question before Masato asks it. “And _why,_ because.”

Too damn nosy. It’s probably because of their little blond friend – the noisy one, Syo, and his soul-mate in HEAVENs; those two have put everyone in some sort of obsessive mood. It’s what got Reiji going with Ai the other day, commenting on the revelations of Yamato Hyuga and Syo Kurusu, and HEAVENs’ other couple, Kira Sumeragi and Van Kiryuin.

Masato is silent for a moment, staring into his tea as it if holds the answers to his questions rather than the rock musician across from him. “Perhaps you should consider it, because.” He lets his sentence hang half-finished in retaliation.

Ranmaru snorts. Yeah, the pianist has grown a lot these past few years.

“It’s not always a happy ending. People don’t wait around. So what, I talk to them, and then what?” He must sound as tired as he feels, because Masato’s gaze looks so much softer now. He doesn’t want his pity, not when he’s just explaining the way of the world as he sees it. 

“You are correct, it is not always easy nor happy but,” Masato finishes his tea and rises to leave, hovering at the doorway, “stories do not always end in the proclaimed ‘ending;’ maybe there are others waiting for your epilogue.”

Ranmaru still doesn’t fucking know what that means when his alarm clock reads three in the morning and he can’t get his eyes to stay shut.

\--

His leg keeps tapping out a familiar quarter time beat, that’s what is making his hand shake, he tells himself. His finger hovers over his wrist, agonizingly deliberate as he rapidly flips through scenarios in his brain.

No. If one’s heart wants it, seize it.

He wants it.

_Sorry I took so long. Had to be sure. Don’t half-ass anything._

He waits. One, two, three, four; one, two, three four; the familiar beat against the linoleum floor isn’t louder than his heartbeat in his ears, but it’s soothing, repetitive.

The warmth is tentative at first, then overwhelming. It takes him a moment to realize he can feel it in both wrists, and jerks off all his bracelets on his other hand to look. He has to press both pale wrists together  
to get the whole message, written in two different, familiar scrawls.

_We knew you’d come around  
when the time was right. ___

__A door opens behind him. He barely registers it, until there’s two bodies beside him, two arms extended. He sees his own message on them, fading slowly, and narrows his eyes as he faces two pairs of different blue eyes. His face is probably red and embarrassing. He scowls._ _

__“What the fuck,” but it’s kind of a broken rasp instead of a grumble, and he’s reaching for Ren and Masato both in a way that makes Ren laugh warmly._ _

__“We just knew,” is all the explanation Masato has for him now._ _

__\--_ _

__Later, there is more time for talking._ _

__“Is this what you meant before?” Ranmaru learns Ren is a warm, steadfast weight when he is asleep, and he finds he doesn’t mind it. Masato is still awake on his side of the bed, eyes scanning the pages of a book beneath a dimly lit lamp, but his gaze shifts to Ranmaru when he’s addressed._ _

__“We wanted to know if you had someone else waiting for you – because we certainly were, officially on the other side of your connection or not.” He lets Ranmaru simmer on that statement for a bit, before leaning over to kiss him._ _

__It’s a kiss he takes, and returns with as much as he pours into his music._ _

**Author's Note:**

> well that is all the plans i had for this series originally, but the dirty multi-shipper that i am, i might keep going but with some other aus of.. this au? lol
> 
> i'd really like to do a rantoki with this, basically. and maybe give yamsyo the solo fic they deserve. we'll see. 
> 
> and maybe, just maybe, revisit this original bit with a smutty one, hmm? smutty renmasa or smutty rrm...
> 
> or, just. have my cake and eat it too. renmasarantoki anyone? :)
> 
> :) we'll see.


End file.
